[HN Gopher] Longitudinal analysis shows durable immune memory af...
___________________________________________________________________
Longitudinal analysis shows durable immune memory after SARS-CoV-2
infection
Author : briefcomment
Score : 185 points
Date : 2021-08-08 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cell.com)
| unanswered wrote:
| Real facts that people won't like to hear: anyone who thought
| differently probably needs to retake a high school biology class.
| [deleted]
| ebiester wrote:
| The problem is that you think a high school biology class is
| sufficient to understand the broader implications.
|
| What is the limitation of this study? For example, in the
| context of the paper, "immunity" means that your immune system
| mounts an immediate response. Do the antibodies created attack
| variants equally effectively relative to vaccines? Are they
| better? Worse?
|
| This paper is one data point. Your high school biology class
| won't teach you how to understand the limitations of the paper.
| That's why we have people who study this for decades.
|
| Don't mistake your "high school biology class" with expertise.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I suspect nobody commenting here is equipped to analyze
| critically the science being done either on the virus or the
| vaccine, yet everybody speaks with authority on what's
| relevant and what's bullhockey.
|
| A high-school biology class will give you good general priors
| and instincts about how things generally work and is as good
| as you're gonna get trying to understand what's going on
| currently without a relevant degree or a few years of
| hindsight for the politicization to die down. Infections
| generally leave antibodies behind therefore I'm going to
| assume people who have been infected have some immunity to
| this variant. Masks reduce the spread of spit therefore I'm
| going to assume they are generally useful to combat the
| spread.
|
| I'm sure this will strike some as being anti-science but
| having seen how the sausage gets made wrt science and
| medicine I don't trust myself or the journalists to interpret
| or qualify the new results we get every week.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| This is a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect[1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
| dzink wrote:
| Immunity persists for a while but doesn't seem to stop the new
| variants. Another study shows that re-infection with Covid is a
| lot more likely in unvaccinated people than in vaccinated.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Data from Israel shows that vaccinated people have a 6.72 times
| higher chance to get infected than previously infected people:
| https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
| mikem170 wrote:
| That's interesting!
|
| > More than 7,700 new cases of the virus have been detected
| during the most recent wave starting in May, but just 72 of
| the confirmed cases were reported in people who were known to
| have been infected previously - that is, less than 1% of the
| new cases.
|
| > Roughly 40% of new cases - or more than 3,000 patients -
| involved people who had been infected despite being
| vaccinated.
|
| Optimistically both vaccine and natural immunity are good,
| but the numbers above seem to indicate that natural immunity
| is significantly better.
| jetpks wrote:
| Do you have a moderately credible source on this? The linked
| is pushing a radical right-wing hard-line anti-vaccine agenda
| too hard to be considered remotely credible or trustworthy.
| It also does not link to primary sources.
| lazyjones wrote:
| Perhaps this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-
| makary-says-natu... or
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/are-
| recovered-c... but I can't find the original study or
| channel 13 report because I don't speak Hebrew.
| thih9 wrote:
| Do you or anyone else have a link to the other study?
| tchalla wrote:
| > Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to this
| question will vary based on how an individual's antibodies
| against SARS-CoV-2 were generated: over the course of a
| naturally acquired infection or from a COVID-19 vaccine. The
| new evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in
| response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of
| SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying "single letter" changes in a key
| portion of their spike protein compared to antibodies acquired
| from an infection.
|
| https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...
| [deleted]
| criticaltinker wrote:
| This paper further supports the fact that naturally acquired
| immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is 1) robust and 2) durable.
|
| 1) Robust means the immune response recognizes many different
| parts of the virus.
|
| 2) Durable means the immune response remains detectable - and
| likely effective at protecting the individual - for a long period
| of time.
|
| A robust immune response is important because it provides a
| certain degree of protection against variants of the virus.
|
| This robustness is why some people hypothesize that natural
| immunity provides better protection than vaccination - however
| this hypothesis has not been conclusively proven in the
| literature yet. If you're aware of primary sources that say
| otherwise please share them.
|
| For now, all available evidence strongly suggests that
| individuals with naturally acquired immunity are at least equally
| well protected as individuals who have been vaccinated. Here are
| a couple more supporting references [1][2].
|
| As a final point - in the literature there is some evidence &
| concern that the current mRNA vaccines induce an immune response
| which is highly targeted toward the spike protein [3]. When
| combined with mass vaccination campaigns, this creates tremendous
| selective pressure that can further enhance the fitness of the
| virus, and lead to increasingly infectious or virulent variants
| [3][4][5][6].
|
| It's clear that vaccination poses little additional risk - but
| also little benefit - to previously infected individuals, and
| consequently our vaccination campaigns should be highly targeted
| toward vulnerable demographics to reap the most benefits and
| minimize the risks to public health.
|
| [1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma
| cells in humans
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf
|
| [2] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected
| individuals
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...
|
| [3] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical
| interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
|
| [4] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of
| concern
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/scie...
|
| [5] mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and
| circulating variants
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6
|
| [6] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly
| Virulent Pathogens
| https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
| bmer wrote:
| Reference [1] is applicable to how our body handles an immune
| response to the viral infection in general: i.e. whether
| naturally acquired, or through controlled vaccination. Natural
| infections were, naturally focused upon, in order to understand
| the baseline dynamics of viral infection.
|
| Reference [2] is...it says just as much about the efficacy of
| vaccination as the efficacy of natural immunity:
|
| > The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained
| almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects,
| previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and
| previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated, compared
| with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among previously
| uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated.
|
| Read reference [3] to understand why natural immunity doesn't
| cut it. Note that widespread natural immunity causes the same
| positive selection pressure as widespread vaccine deployment,
| and:
|
| > Finally, our work suggests that immune evasion requiring one
| to two mutations occurs within months, raising the prospect
| that this phenomenon will further shorten the duration of
| natural immunity...
|
| The paper goes on to provide (under Discussion) a series of
| strategies for developing a vaccination system that takes into
| account modelled viral evolution. Can't come up with strategies
| like that for natural immunity, apart from: "periodically re-
| infect individual"...which is exactly what vaccines do, in a
| controlled manner.
|
| Reference [4] and [5] are research tabulating mutations the
| virus is undergoing to counter both natural acquired and
| vaccine-mediated immune responses. It is not an indictment
| against vaccines, but just like paper [3], provide strategies
| on how to update vaccines. That updates will be required is not
| a surprise to anyone. Viral evolution has long been known of,
| and no one expected the emergency COVID-19 vaccines to be
| effective until the end of time.
|
| Reference [6]...did you read it? It's about vaccines which
| protect the host(keep them alive), but still keep them
| infectious (capable of transmission). None of the COVID-19
| vaccines do that...
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Are you trying to refute the claim that natural infection
| confers immunity that is at least equally as protective as
| vaccination?
|
| It's not clear to me that you've presented any counter
| evidence. I will try to outline my thoughts on your comment
| to help the discussion.
|
| [1] is another primary source beyond the OP that demonstrates
| the durability of the immune response from natural infection.
| We are in agreement that in principle the immune response
| from vaccination should also be durable due to relying on the
| same underlying mechanisms of the immune system - in fact I
| am unaware of any literature which demonstrates otherwise. So
| your point about [1] doesn't seem particularly relevant to
| me.
|
| > Reference [2] is...it says just as much about the efficacy
| of vaccination as the efficacy of natural immunity
|
| Yes you're right, and that is a relevant quote you pulled
| from the abstract. Again, I think we're actually in agreement
| here - the findings support my original claims.
|
| > Read reference [3] to understand why natural immunity
| doesn't cut it. Note that widespread natural immunity causes
| the same positive selection pressure as widespread vaccine
| deployment
|
| You seem to be missing the central thesis of [3], here are
| the relevant excerpts:
|
| - "The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-
| CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-
| based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under
| control."
|
| - "Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral
| immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these
| biomedical interventions. With the emergence of new strains
| of SARS-CoV-2 with altered transmissibility and immune
| evasion potential, a critical question is this: how easily
| can the virus escape neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) targeting
| the spike RBD?"
|
| - "Our modeling suggests that SARS-CoV-2 mutants with one or
| two mildly deleterious mutations are expected to exist in
| high numbers due to neutral genetic variation, and
| consequently resistance to vaccines or other prophylactics
| that rely on one or two antibodies for protection can develop
| quickly -and repeatedly- under positive selection."
|
| - "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the
| population increases substantially as the number of infected
| individuals increases, suggesting that complementary
| strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert
| specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral
| prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective
| pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration,
| masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing
| the risk of immune escape"
|
| - "Strategies for viral elimination should therefore be
| diversified across molecular targets and therapeutic
| modalities"
|
| We are in agreement [4] and [5] are not an indictment against
| vaccines - but again you seem to be missing the most
| important and highly relevant findings which support my
| claims.
|
| For example from [4]:
|
| - "The acquisition of the L452R substitution by multiple
| lineages across multiple continents, including the B.1.617.1
| and B.1.617.2 lineages emerging in India (54), is suggestive
| of positive selection, which might result from the selective
| pressure of RBD-specific neutralizing Abs"
|
| - "Our data support that the SARS-CoV-2 NTD evolved a
| compensatory mechanism to form an alternative disulfide bond
| and that mutations of the S signal peptide occur in vivo in a
| clinical setting to promote immune evasion."
|
| - "Understanding the newly found mechanism of immune evasion
| in emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, such as the signal peptide
| modification described herein, is as important as sequence
| surveillance itself to successfully counter the ongoing
| pandemic."
|
| For example from [5]:
|
| - "different individuals immunized with the Moderna
| (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccines produce
| closely related, and nearly identical, antibodies."
|
| - "To avert selection and escape, antibody therapies should
| be composed of combinations of antibodies that target non-
| overlapping or highly conserved epitopes"
|
| - "We speculate that these mutations emerged in response to
| immune selection in individuals with nonsterilizing
| immunity."
|
| > Reference [6]...did you read it? It's about vaccines which
| protect the host(keep them alive), but still keep them
| infectious (capable of transmission). None of the COVID-19
| vaccines do that...
|
| You are incorrect - the current spike protein focused mRNA
| based vaccines do not guarantee sterilizing immunity - that
| means you can be vaccinated yet still get infected and
| transmit the virus to others. Please cite your sources if
| you're going to make such claims.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Not to disagree with the effectiveness of immunity gained by
| getting Covid-19, but also:
|
| "The evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in
| response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-
| CoV-2 variants ... compared to antibodies acquired from an
| infection."
|
| https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...
|
| "Vaccination offers longer, stronger immunity"
|
| https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/why-covid-19-vaccine...
|
| "Why a vaccine can provide better immunity than an actual
| infection"
|
| https://theconversation.com/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better...
|
| "Why You Need to Get Vaccinated Even If You've Already Had
| COVID-19"
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-get-v...
|
| And also, vaccination is a much, much safer way to get
| antibodies, than via getting sick with Covid-19.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| To add to the list:
|
| "Kentucky residents who were not vaccinated had 2.34 times the
| odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully
| vaccinated (odds ratio [OR] = 2.34; 95% confidence interval
| [CI] = 1.58-3.47). These findings suggest that among persons
| with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides
| additional protection against reinfection."
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Here is a paper (not yet peer-reviewed) which presents
| statistically strong evidence (N = 52,238) that vaccinating
| previously infected individuals provides practically no
| benefit [1].
|
| Quote from [1]:
|
| - "The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained
| almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects,
| previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and
| previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated, compared
| with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among
| previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated."
|
| Right now there is no scientific consensus that full
| vaccination of previously infected individuals provides any
| additional protection that is meaningfully beneficial. In
| fact there is a lot of evidence pointing the other way -
| supporting the idea that vaccination strategies should be
| highly targeted at only the most vulnerable populations.
|
| [1] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected
| individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.0
| 1.21258176v...
| raphlinus wrote:
| Thanks for bringing this paper, it's relevant to the
| conversation. A couple of points of context.
|
| First, this study is quite early on in the vaccination
| campaign, when supplies were very short. The main
| conclusion is that they should be _prioritized_ to people
| who have not had prior infection. That advice was not
| followed, largely because determining prior infection
| status complicates the protocols for vaccination quite a
| bit, and simpler is better. Now, at least in the US, we 're
| in a situation where we are literally throwing vaccine down
| the drain[1, 2].
|
| Second, this study in particular predates the significant
| spread of the delta variant, and there is particular
| concern about reinfection from that variant[3]. Vaccine
| effectiveness appears to be somewhat reduced compared with
| the original variant, but still pretty good.
|
| This is definitely an area where more science is needed.
|
| [1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/20/states-are-
| sitting-on-mi...
|
| [2]: https://www.al.com/coronavirus/2021/08/alabama-threw-
| out-650...
|
| [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03777-9
| criticaltinker wrote:
| > The main conclusion is that they should be prioritized
| to people who have not had prior infection
|
| You're leaving out the primary finding, here is the
| actual conclusion from the study I previously cited [1]:
|
| - "Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are
| unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and
| vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not
| been infected before."
|
| > this study in particular predates the significant
| spread of the delta variant, and there is particular
| concern about reinfection from that variant
|
| I agree on the general point. Relevant to the discussion
| is the fact that the OP paper addresses this, here are
| relevant excerpts:
|
| - "Our findings show that most COVID-19 patients induce a
| wide-ranging immune defense against SARS-CoV-2 infection,
| encompassing antibodies and memory B cells recognizing
| both the RBD and other regions of the spike, broadly-
| specific and polyfunctional CD4+ T cells, and
| polyfunctional CD8+ T cells."
|
| - "The immune response to natural infection is likely to
| provide some degree of protective immunity even against
| SARS-CoV-2 variants because the CD4+ and CD8+ T cell
| epitopes will likely be conserved."
|
| - "Thus, vaccine induction of CD8+ T cells to more
| conserved antigens such as the nucleocapsid, rather than
| just to SARS-CoV-2 spike antigens, may add benefit to
| more rapid containment of infection as SARS-CoV-2
| variants overtake the prevailing strains."
|
| These findings hint that naturally acquired immunity may
| actually be more robust to variants of concern in
| comparison to the immune response induced by vaccination.
| But admittedly this has not been proven yet.
|
| See my top level post on this thread for more details and
| citations.
| rubatuga wrote:
| Observational evidence of course, meaning plenty of
| confounders.
| timr wrote:
| Also a very small study of N=246, which is why the
| confidence interval on the OR is so large.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Probably not as clear cut as that. The OP study suggests that
| vaccines can be improved from learnings from natural immunity.
|
| > "Overcoming the challenges to end the pandemic is accentuated
| by the recognition that SARS-CoV-2 can undergo rapid antigenic
| variation that may lower vaccine effectiveness in preventing
| new cases and progression to severe disease. Our findings show
| that most COVID-19 patients induce a wide-ranging immune
| defense against SARS-CoV-2 infection, encompassing antibodies
| and memory B cells recognizing both the RBD and other regions
| of the spike, broadly-specific and polyfunctional CD4+ T cells,
| and polyfunctional CD8+ T cells. The immune response to natural
| infection is likely to provide some degree of protective
| immunity even against SARS-CoV-2 variants because the CD4+ and
| CD8+ T cell epitopes will likely be conserved. Thus, vaccine
| induction of CD8+ T cells to more conserved antigens such as
| the nucleocapsid, rather than just to SARS-CoV-2 spike
| antigens, may add benefit to more rapid containment of
| infection as SARS-CoV-2 variants overtake the prevailing
| strains."
| timr wrote:
| I am a believer in vaccines, but you're mischaracterizing the
| first link by selective omission. You've cut out the critical
| words of the sentence (emphasized):
|
| > The new evidence shows that protective antibodies generated
| in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of
| SARS-CoV-2 variants _carrying "single letter" changes in a key
| portion of their spike protein_ compared to antibodies acquired
| from an infection.
|
| The paper shows that vaccines produce a more diverse antibody
| response _to the RBD_ , which is one portion of the spike
| protein. They admit that natural infection produces antibodies
| targeted to _other_ portions of the spike protein (also,
| presumably, to other parts of the virus, though that isn 't
| discussed in this press release):
|
| > Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were
| more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an
| infection, which more often targeted other portions of the
| spike protein.
|
| Is this evidence that vaccines are "better" than natural
| infection? No. It can't be. The paper shows that there's a
| _difference_ between the antibody responses, but beyond that,
| it 's impossible to know what the practical impacts of that
| difference might be from this paper.
|
| This is a perfect example of the political weaponization of
| pre-prints that has happened throughout the pandemic. People
| read these things, don't fully understand what they're reading
| or what questions they answer, and immediately jump to social
| media to start waving them around like team flags (and worse,
| people _who should know better_ -- like Francis Collins -- seem
| to encourage the behavior. This PR seems to be trying very hard
| to mislead, without actually stepping over the line.)
|
| This is an interesting paper, but it is in no way a definitive
| statement about the relative benefits of vaccination vs.
| natural immunity.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Thank you for adding nuance. This topic is indeed in sore
| need of more nuance.
| raphlinus wrote:
| Thanks for trying to bring more precision to the discussion.
| I also cited that blog post elsethread, and, having reviewed
| it, agree it's not the single best piece of evidence. It
| establishes a narrow result which _suggests_ a generally
| better immune response from vaccines, but does not prove it.
|
| If I had to cite a single preprint to support the assertion,
| it would probably be this one:
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v4
|
| Obviously this study also has limitations: it speaks only to
| Ab levels, while obviously the overall immune response is a
| lot more complicated.
|
| I agree with the "waving of preprints" claim. Unfortunately,
| hyperskepticism, rejecting drawing conclusions because of the
| inevitable limitations of any study, is also a politicized
| position, and unfortunately I see a fair amount of that as
| well.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Thanks for the citation, I hadn't seen that paper yet.
|
| I agree it predominantly speaks to antibody levels. For
| others reading who don't already know - antibody levels are
| used as proxy to measure immune protection, but currently
| there is no scientific consensus that increasingly higher
| antibody levels correspond to increasingly better
| protection. Similarly, it is difficult to determine at what
| antibody levels an individual is "protected enough". So
| answering those questions is an ongoing scientific
| endeavor.
|
| With that said, the literature is rapidly approaching (and
| likely has already established) scientific consensus that
| vaccination increases many components of the humoral
| response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. But for the reasons I
| previously stated, this has not been proven to translate
| into better protection or additional benefits for
| previously infected individuals.
|
| So while antibody levels are a useful measure, another
| important factor is the robustness of the vaccine induced
| immune responses in comparison to the response induced in
| naturally infected individuals. There is a relevant section
| in the paper you cited titled 'mRNA vaccines induce higher
| Ab levels and greater Ab breadth than natural exposure to
| infection'.
|
| My takeaway is that the authors are concluding that the
| vaccine induces a more robust antibody response because
| "the vaccine induced significant cross-reactive Abs against
| the SARS spike and SARS RBD". However they also clearly
| state that the vaccine does not induce antibodies against
| the nucleocapsid protein, which natural infection does.
|
| For these reasons I feel that characterizing the vaccine
| induced immune response as "more robust" doesn't really
| paint an accurate picture. Especially when it has yet to be
| proven that this difference in immune response is actually
| beneficial for health outcomes in people infected with the
| virus.
|
| Here are some key excerpts:
|
| - "The nucleocapsid protein (NP) is an immunodominant
| antigen for which the antibody response increases in
| concordance with natural exposure (Figure 2A,3A and 4)."
|
| - "However, nucleocapsid is not a component of the mRNA
| vaccines and consequently there is no vaccine-induced
| increase in Ab against this antigen. Accordingly, anti-
| spike antibody levels increased in vaccinees while the
| nucleocapsid protein Ab level remained constant."
|
| - "Natural exposure in seropositive people induces high
| antibody levels against nucleocapsid protein (NP), full-
| length spike (S1+S2) and the S2 domain. Antibodies against
| S1 and the RBD domains are lower."
|
| - "Vaccinated individuals have high Ab levels against full-
| length spike and the S2 domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike, and
| significantly higher antibody levels against S1 and the RBD
| domains compared to naturally exposed individuals."
|
| - "In natural exposure there was no significant cross-
| reactivity against SARS S1 or the RBD domains.
| Surprisingly, the vaccine induced significant cross-
| reactive Abs against the SARS spike and SARS RBD."
|
| - "Vaccination induces a more robust antibody response than
| natural exposure alone, SUGGESTING that those who have
| recovered from COVID benefit from the vaccination with
| stronger and broader antibody response."
| nwienert wrote:
| We know based on past corornaviruses that natural infection
| can lead to durable immunity up to 20 years, and like you
| mentioned with T-cells and more. We also have data showing
| the current ones so far last as long as we've tested them,
| while vaccines have waned once near a year out. The
| consensus hasn't been reached, by my current beliefs
| strongly tend towards (based on many past similar viruses
| and all current studies) that vaccine is far less
| efficacious.
|
| https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
|
| Note: that's 6.7 times stronger immunity from natural vs
| vaccinated! If anything we should have "previously-
| infected" cards that confer far greater privileges than
| vaccination cards, if we're going to be playing that silly
| game.
|
| Here's a citation showing stronger T cell immunity from
| naturally infected:
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6549/1418
|
| Natural infection stronger across the board:
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news-
| medical.net/amp/news/2...
|
| Natural immunity holds across even previously known
| coronavirus variants:
|
| https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/07/covid_survivors_resi
| s...
| raphlinus wrote:
| _Antibodies_ wane, but B-cell and T-cell response is
| important for longer term protection. Fortunately, we
| have results (including [B] and [T]) that vaccines also
| induce these memory cell responses.
|
| Also, the durability of immunity from coronavirus
| probably depends on the exact coronavirus. It does seem
| to be true for SARS, but possibly less so for the
| seasonal coronaviruses that cause a respectable fraction
| of common colds[3]. We don't really know yet where SARS-
| CoV-2 falls on that spectrum.
|
| [B]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.12.2
| 1259864v...
|
| [T]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.30.2
| 1259787v...
|
| [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1083-1
| nwienert wrote:
| While they may stimulate some B and T, they aren't close
| to the levels from infection.
|
| From what I've seen many coronavirus have durable
| immunity from infection, you'd need to cite that they
| vary. Also, from what I've seen the T and B cell response
| is not nearly the same effect, nor as durable.
|
| Further, like the Israeli report, there are a handful
| more reports of previously infected not getting
| reinfected at nearly the same rates. The Israeli report
| has hard numbers in the article you ignored.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I think you added the links in an edit?
|
| The Science cite shows something that's very different
| than what people might take from your comment. Briefly,
| prior infection plus one mRNA dose induces a very good
| immune response, much better than a single dose without
| prior infection. It does not compare two mRNA doses
| against prior infection.
|
| I believe the cite I provided _does_ support the idea
| that coronaviruses vary, in particular that HCoV-229E
| exhibits continuous genetic drift. But here 's an
| excellent paper that goes into a lot more detail on that:
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.137
| 1/j...
| dsyrk wrote:
| The idea that two mRNA dose immunity is superior on
| average to those recovered with natural immunity is
| absurd. I haven't reviewed your sources yet, but if you
| have such a source then you are cherry picking among
| numerous other results that disagree. Antibody levels can
| be lower but effective protection against re-infection is
| very high because memory cells can generate antibodies on
| demand. Natural antibodies target numerous areas of the
| virus and are more resilient to variants. Additionally
| recovered individuals who receive an mRNA dose have the
| highest levels of measured antibodies.
|
| Why are you trying to arguing something that is clearly
| false? Do you have a political objective of some sort?
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I love how the top comment is links to 4 opinion piece articles
| two of which are from healthline.com and theconversation.com.
|
| "Citations"
|
| My high school English teacher would be disappointed in this
| site.
|
| I'm sure there's a bunch of actual scientific articles below
| that are flagged because they are going against the narrative.
|
| Don't ever change HN.
| phkahler wrote:
| We can cherry pick papers all day long to support or refute the
| idea that having had Covid19 is equivalent/better/worse than
| getting the vaccine. Anyone being honest can see that the jury
| is still out on the issue. But I can state 2 things with
| certainty. 1) having had it does offer some degree of
| immunization. 2) there is a lot of evidence that those spike
| proteins do damage. Given that, I dont know why some people
| lump previously infected folks in with anti-vaxxers. It's not
| even close to the same thinking.
| mmcnl wrote:
| > there is a lot of evidence that those spike proteins do
| damage
|
| Citation needed.
| arein3 wrote:
| you can look at jewish data
|
| for a highly vaccinated population 50% newly infected are
| unvaccinated, 50% are vaccinated and only 1% are getting the
| virus the second time
| mbgerring wrote:
| "Acquiring" natural immunity also has the following side effects
| at a much higher rate than the vaccine:
|
| - Death
|
| - Hospitalization
|
| - Chronic illness, which can include long-term neurological
| impairment
|
| I feel like it's important to keep that in mind if you're either
| advocating "natural immunity" as a public health strategy, or
| considering it a personal strategy.
| landemva wrote:
| Much of the death toll centers on those who are already sick,
| obese, and otherwise compromised. Age groups of children and
| young adults show remarkable resilience to infection. There is
| not one outcome.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| So you would have us call to those who are already tired and
| add death to their burden?
|
| I doubt it?
| nicoburns wrote:
| There is nevertheless a significantly lower incidence of
| negative effects from the vaccine than from a covid infection
| in all age groups.
| nullc wrote:
| > "Acquiring" natural immunity also has the following side
| effects at a much higher rate than the vaccine: > - Death
|
| The pfizer vaccine clinical trial had equal rates of death
| among vaccine and placebo recipients, FWIW.
|
| I don't believe any RCT has validated the claim that
| vaccination reduces the recipients chance of death.
|
| (Nor has any validated that parachutes save lives, I suppose!)
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Vaccination also has more durable immunity than natural
| immunity in this case. Without those risks you outline.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| * Citation needed.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I expected this for the mRNA vaccine, but source?
| tchalla wrote:
| > Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to
| this question will vary based on how an individual's
| antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were generated: over the
| course of a naturally acquired infection or from a COVID-19
| vaccine. The new evidence shows that protective antibodies
| generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a
| broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying "single
| letter" changes in a key portion of their spike protein
| compared to antibodies acquired from an infection.
|
| https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-
| genera...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| I'm not sure this is clear. Yes, this is what has been stated
| in the media, but I have yet to see data to back the claim.
|
| And in particular it has been shown that natural immunity
| produces a much broader set of antibodies that may allow the
| immune system to cope with variants better.
|
| I'm not advocating natural immunity btw. I completely agree
| people should get the vaccine.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| That's actually incorrect. Someone was kind enough to cite
| in another reply to me.
|
| I'm honestly a bit disturbed how much confidence software
| engineers have in their consumption of virology research.
| My good friend has worked in it for 10+ years not including
| a doctorate and worked on an mRNA vaccine.
|
| I trust his takes more than any media and certainly more
| than some of these folks replying doubting the state of the
| science. Vaccines are the safest and best protection
| against COVID one can get.
|
| Not specifically replying to you with that, just the
| general tone of these threads. Folks are out of their
| depth.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Hi Pot, meet Kettle?
|
| My statement literally starts with "I'm not sure...". You
| begin yours with "That's actually incorrect." Which
| expresses more confidence?
|
| My opinion is based on a conversation with a Ph.D
| immunologist that happens to be a friend as well. And if
| that's not enough here is a paper from a totally separate
| lab that has similar conclusions, with actual data https:
| //www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.29.454333v1
|
| mRNA vaccines are obviously much better at generating
| antibodies for the RBD. That's an empirical fact, no one
| is disputing that. But natural immunity presents antibody
| targets beyond the RBD.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| If you finished the post, I mentioned I wasn't referring
| to you.
|
| With respect to the incorrect part, I was replying to:
|
| "...it has been shown that natural immunity produces a
| much broader set of antibodies that may allow the immune
| system to cope with variants better."
|
| Which is indeed wrong.
|
| Hope that helps
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Links please. If those at risk aren't given the jab then counts
| of death and hospitalizations are going to be skewed against
| the natural immunity.
| briefcomment wrote:
| That's a strawman. Can you instead address this particular
| bucket: people who have had Covid, and are now wondering if
| they are as immune as they can hope for, considering all other
| available interventions.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > people who have had Covid, and are now wondering if they
| are as immune as they can hope for, considering all other
| available interventions.
|
| They are not "as immune as they can hope for" and would
| benefit from vaccination, after having had COVID, in that
| respect.
|
| Links posted already, but mainly
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-
| get-v...
| plorg wrote:
| I absolutely don't think it's a strawman. Nearly to a person,
| the people in my life who have not gotten vaccinated and have
| not yet gotten Covid-19, if asked, have been making this
| argument: it's not that bad, it's not worth getting the
| vaccine.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Actually being infected with Covid (symptomatic) probably
| does confer the best immunity possible, for sure. You should
| still get vaccinated after that though, because research
| suggests that vaccination can significantly help alleviate
| long COViD symptoms which a large fraction of patients have.
| Haven't seen actual numbers on the immunity boost conferred
| by post-Covid vaccination though (no reason to think it'll
| not add at least a slight bit).
| tchalla wrote:
| > Actually being infected with Covid (symptomatic) probably
| does confer the best immunity possible, for sure.
|
| I don't think so. We have multiple links in this thread
| that say otherwise.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The stabilized spike used in several of the vaccines
| appears to offer better resistance to new infection than
| convalescent immunity.
|
| (The theory is that the vaccine antibodies do a better job
| of binding to the active site on infectious virus particles
| than the antibodies induced from infection, which bind to
| whichever part of the virus, and may bind to the form the
| active site takes after attaching to a cell, rather than
| prior)
|
| Also, getting the vaccine as early as it is available is a
| better way to avoid long Covid than getting the vaccine
| after you've had a course of infection.
| jchw wrote:
| Not being or knowing people applicable to the comment does
| not make it a straw man.
|
| Anyway, available sources so far seem to suggest greater
| immunity from the vaccine.
|
| https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-
| genera...
| [deleted]
| daveguy wrote:
| Identifying the relative effects of two courses of action is
| nowhere near a straw man.
|
| Merriam-Webster definition of straw man: a weak or imaginary
| opposition (such as an argument or adversary) set up only to
| be easily confuted
|
| Stating the actual side-effects of one course over the other
| is neither weak nor imaginary.
| Izkata wrote:
| There are two different buckets of people that OP is
| conflating:
|
| * Those who haven't been infected yet
|
| * Those who have already been infected
|
| They're ignoring the second bucket, which is what GP was
| pointing out - only talking about the first bucket and
| pretending it applies to both.
| daveguy wrote:
| No. They are addressing the subgroup of the first group
| of people, who you are ignoring:
|
| * Those who haven't been infected who are wondering if
| they should not bother with the vaccine if getting
| infected provides durable immunity.
|
| The answer to that is: the vaccine is orders of magnitude
| less dangerous than contracting the virus.
|
| Just because you don't address every single group of
| people in a response does not mean that response is
| invalid or unimportant.
| briefcomment wrote:
| What group two should do is far more interesting IMO
| given this evidence.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| This study shows that those who have had COVID but are
| unvaccinated have 2.3x the risk of reinfection compared to
| those who had COVID and are vaccinated. 246 patients, 492
| controls.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm.
| ..
| rubatuga wrote:
| This isn't a randomized control trial, meaning you have
| tons of confounders.
| Izkata wrote:
| > First, reinfection was not confirmed through whole genome
| sequencing, which would be necessary to definitively prove
| that the reinfection was caused from a distinct virus
| relative to the first infection.
|
| I guess that would explain how it doesn't fit with this: ht
| tps://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t.
| .. (<200 confirmed reinfections worldwide, 82k suspected
| reinfections worldwide).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Well unfortunately COVID forgot to ask my opinion before
| gifting me with one for free
| mbgerring wrote:
| I'm sorry you got sick, and I'm glad to see this study
| suggesting you have durable immunity! I worry that since it's
| dated July 14 it may not have enough data on the Delta
| variant to be useful in considering your risk going forward.
| I hope you remain in good health.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| The immunity acquired from infection may be more robust
| against variants since a broader set of antibodies are
| produced.
| tchalla wrote:
| May be not.
|
| > The new evidence shows that protective antibodies
| generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a
| broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying "single
| letter" changes in a key portion of their spike protein
| compared to antibodies acquired from an infection.
|
| https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-
| genera...
| acituan wrote:
| You can't compare a longitudinal study with a cross
| sectional study. This study doesn't account for the time
| dependent decay of vaccines' immunity. There is more than
| one dimension to optimize for.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Same source you quoted also says:
|
| >Our findings show that most COVID-19 patients induce a
| wide-ranging immune defense against SARS-CoV-2 infection,
| encompassing antibodies and memory B cells recognizing
| both the RBD and other regions of the spike, broadly-
| specific and polyfunctional CD4+ T cells, and
| polyfunctional CD8+ T cells.
|
| Meaning that natural immunity may be better, because it
| targets not just the spike protein like the vaccine, but
| also other parts of the virus.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| right : the article points out CD* killer cells target
| shared across variants nucleotide protein sequences,
| which the vaccines don't?
| _Microft wrote:
| A broader set of antibodies does not necessarily have to
| be beneficial. They might be targeting parts of the virus
| that could change without it losing its function. The
| spike protein seems to be close to indispensable for this
| virus. Targetting it specifically instead of just
| 'something', might therefore be the preferable thing.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Right, but it is harder for an organism to make multiple
| adaptations at once. Natural infection produces
| antibodies that target the spike protein as well as other
| sites. To evade immunity, the virus would need to change
| both sites.
|
| It is very clear that the vaccine is putting selective
| pressure on spike protein evolution. Having alternative
| targets makes it harder to escape.
|
| We currently don't know if those other sites are
| beneficial or not. Sometimes they can even be counter
| productive (ADE, but we don't really see that yet?)
| ithkuil wrote:
| (genuine question) What does prevent us from creating
| mRNA vaccines that target multiple sites and not only the
| spike protein?
| raphlinus wrote:
| https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-focus-on-the-
| spik... is probably relevant to your question. The short
| answer (this was also discussed recently on TWiV) is that
| spike is the earliest interaction with cells, so focusing
| on it hopefully causes the immune response to mount
| earlier as well. But, as described in the link, other
| proteins may be viable targets as well.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Another issue is, other targets may not provide
| neutralizing immunity and may facilitate ADE. I don't
| think we've seen ADE in natural infection yet, so it may
| just be a theoretical issue, but I also don't know if
| we've really looked for ADE in natural infection either.
|
| We do know that other similar coronavirus vaccine
| candidates (a candidate for SARS-COV-1) exhibited ADE in
| primate studies. So since the spike protein appears
| effective currently, maybe it's best to stick with that.
| raphlinus wrote:
| For people curious about ADE (a fascinating topic that so
| far doesn't seem to have caused problems with SARS-
| CoV-2), here is some excellent background reading that
| covers many of the points made in the above comment, with
| citations and deeper discussion:
|
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12
| /an...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| I remember when this whole thing originally broke out,
| ADE was my biggest fear. Even when China was talking
| about a 2-3% infection fatality rate, it's like ok.. well
| that's not going to shatter society. But ADE... the
| prospect that getting it a 2nd time would raise the IFR
| to who knows... 20+%? That was scary.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If having COVID imparts as much future protection as the J&J
| vaccine, there is an ethical argument that one could make:
|
| help vaccinate the poor who want it instead of adding to the
| asymptotic protection of the rich. Else, people might argue we
| should all have n- booster shots to get even better protection,
| when we still don't have enough for the entire world. Vaccines
| are currently zero sum.
| wpasc wrote:
| Can any of the findings from the properties of how natural
| immunity works be guided in to future COVID 19 vaccines?
|
| Given how the pharma companies are examining anti-body half life,
| exploring booster shots, and considering vaccinations against
| variants (like lambda), can any of the learnings go into a more
| durable, more broad vaccine?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2
|
| did it already.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I think GP is referring to the fact that boosters are being
| pushed, which implies vaccine immunity is not persistent. It
| has certainly been pushed since when that study was
| published.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| we still need the primary antibody count up high, because
| we're still in a pandemic, thus the desire for boosters.
|
| in both vaccine induced and survivor induced immune
| responses, long term immune systems come online to store a
| memory of the disease so that on future challenge, more of
| those antibodies will be produced by people fairly rapidly
| after future exposure, even when your blood stream isn't
| full of covid antibodies anymore.
|
| When there are this many cases floating around, though, you
| can't afford to wait for the spin-up time.
|
| If i'm asking for the same image every 500ms from your
| webserver, do you want to go to disk every damn time, or
| are you gonna cache it? Same deal, kinda.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Anitbodies fade after several months.
|
| The booster shots are being touted for every 12 months or
| so.
|
| Not sure your statement tracks.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| don't conflate primary antibodies with b-cells.
|
| You and I aren't walking around with bloodstreams full of
| anti-measles antibodies, despite being vaccinated in
| infancy: but you can bet that you will be if you
| encounter a bunch of measles in the wild, in relatively
| short order.
|
| The question is: are the covid vaccines like tetanus
| vaccines or like measles vaccines? So far, the evidence
| points to the latter, but the desire for a booster anyway
| is driven by the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is a pandemic;
| neither tetanus nor measles are.
| ajross wrote:
| Vaccine immunity _IS_ "natural" immunity. It works the same
| way, by exposing the body's immune system to virus components
| such that they product a response. The only difference is that
| with a vaccine those components don't add up to a viable
| organism.
|
| But yes: expect newer vaccines tailored to currently-
| circulating strains to appear; the existing mRNA vaccines
| produce copies of the spike protein sequenced more than a year
| ago. That's what we've done for influenza for decades, though
| not with the same kind of precision.
| kfprt wrote:
| It's not quite the same, delivery
| (mechanism/location/encapsulation) is different.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| Sure, but there is a real difference in response between
| vaccine/virus.
|
| I think, given the difference in response, the term natural
| immunity makes sense. You have to choose something and I
| don't think 'natural immunity' says anything about vaccine
| immunity being unnatural.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| How is an mRNA strand that encode for a single very specific
| protein on a virus the same as the entire virus?
|
| The antibody memory made from a Natural Infection seems like
| it would be much richer and have much more variety than the
| mRNA vaccine.
|
| I would imagine the attenuated virus vaccine would be closer
| to Natural immunity.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Your body might accidentally create an immunity to a
| portion of the virus that mutates. Perhaps the protein
| produced by vaccine mRNA forces your body to create an
| immunity against a portion of the virus that is less likely
| to mutate.
|
| I don't know if this is the case, but I offer this as an
| example of how our biological systems may be complicated
| beyond intuition.
| User23 wrote:
| The Red Cross disagrees[1]: "One of the Red Cross
| requirements for plasma from routine blood and platelet
| donations that test positive for high-levels of antibodies to
| be used as convalescent plasma is that it must be from a
| donor that has not received a COVID-19 vaccine. This is to
| ensure that antibodies collected from donors have sufficient
| antibodies directly related to their immune response to a
| COVID-19 infection and not just the vaccine, as antibodies
| from an infection and antibodies from a vaccine are not the
| same."
|
| Interestingly this means if you have natural immunity and are
| a regular blood donor you shouldn't get the vaccine since it
| deprives the healthcare system of a lifesaving treatment.
|
| [1] https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-
| blood/dlp/coronavirus--...
| maxerickson wrote:
| They are following the FDA guidance for the convalescent
| plasma EUA, which does allow people that were sick prior to
| vaccination to donate plasma...it seems the Red Cross isn't
| interested in trying to communicate that to potential
| donors.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/media/136798/download
|
| If you expand the boxes on your link, you'll also see that
| they aren't specifically collecting convalescent plasma, as
| demand has decreased. Perhaps that is changing with the
| recent uptick (but given the demographics of blood
| donation, they'll probably have to change their rules if
| they need a lot of it; most people donate ~1 time).
| chuinard wrote:
| Damn you got downvoted real quick.
| csours wrote:
| Just a note to non-immunologists - Immunity means different
| things to health and science professionals vs the general public.
|
| Edit: I'm not going into detail in this comment because I am not
| an immunologist and I cannot express clearly and correctly what
| the difference is, but just be aware that "Immunity" may not mean
| 100% protection in the way that the general public thinks that
| word means.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| As a person with a biology degree who took several immunology
| courses.
|
| I'd be curious to see what your various definitions are.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Don't leave us hanging - what does it mean?
| not2b wrote:
| If I understand correctly, it means that the immune system
| launches an immediate response to the new infection, it
| doesn't mean that the immune system successfully defeats the
| new infection, just makes it more likely. And then there's
| the problem of variants.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| I'm still learning, but the concept of "sterilizing immunity"
| has started to come up recently. What I infer from cursory
| reading is that "immunity" means the body will mount an
| immune response immediately upon exposure to the virus, but
| it doesn't mean that an infection won't take hold.
| "Sterilizing immunity" means immunity strong enough to
| prevent the virus from growing at all.
|
| The issue at hand is that those who have been vaccinated
| and/or recovered from COVID seem to be able to contract the
| disease again, even to the point where they can be infectious
| to others, even if they don't get terribly ill or even show
| symptoms.
| csours wrote:
| Sorry this is incomplete, but "Natural Immunity" means a
| person's immune system will mount an effective response to an
| infectious agent. However, that person may still be infected,
| and may be contagious to some degree while the body is
| fighting off the contagion.
|
| I'm not a doctor or biologist, but I've been learning over
| the past year. For instance, people generally think of things
| like "infected", "sick", and "contagious" as being the same
| thing (or nearly the same thing). If you're talking about one
| person in everyday context, that's fine. If you're talking in
| a clinical or epidemiological context, you have to be more
| careful.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| A simple example is a person with antibodies being sneezed
| on with infectious agents. That person could coincidentally
| sneeze on another person who lacks antibodies, but wouldn't
| worsen themselves since the contagion in the original
| sneeze would get met with prepared antibodies killing off
| the "population" faster than it could replicate.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I wonder if having had different less deadly coronaviruses also
| gives some immunity?
| randymercury wrote:
| That was a theory around why certain countries have fared
| relatively well, places like Cambodia and Vietnam.
|
| Their populations could have been exposed to similar viruses
| and would have had some built in immunity.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I saw someone citing this a few days ago: having had the common
| cold recently can lessen your covid symptoms. He didn't source
| it, but on its face, it seems to make sense.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| ...more or less like most infections, as has been known for
| centuries. And yet, due to the current "anything which doesn't
| make people more fearful must be suppressed" attitude, this kind
| of thing is news. Or would be, if the U.S. newsmedia were willing
| to report it, which I suspect they will not.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Is this offering anything more substantive than you own bias
| and suspicions?
|
| Is there any response that could get you to consider that the
| comment "anything which doesn't make people more fearful must
| be suppressed" is as harmful or even more harmful than the
| media itself?
|
| Asking because I'd like to better understand how to address
| people with your beliefs in the future.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Not the poster you are replying to, but I'll bite, out of
| curiosity about your thinking...
|
| > Is this offering anything more substantive than you own
| bias and suspicions?
|
| My take-away from the article is that they found all the bits
| of the immune system primed for long term protection after
| covid infections. Which is not entirely unexpected, this is
| what happens with sars, also.
|
| > Is there any response that could get you to consider that
| the comment "anything which doesn't make people more fearful
| must be suppressed" is as harmful or even more harmful than
| the media itself?
|
| I got pretty fed up the news other day when the front page of
| the BBC led with the an article about leaked CNN memo and
| three unnamed employees who were fired for not getting
| vaccinated, and another about Jennifer Aniston apparently
| cutting off contact with unvaccinated friends. I felt
| manipulated. I consider stuff like this to be propaganda, not
| news. It reminded me that I need better sources for covid
| information, like statnews.com, to get away from such things.
|
| I'd rather see more facts and less adjectives in the news.
| I'd rather that politicians justify their actions based on
| numbers, not vague statements. It doesn't seem like the
| general public is trusted with the facts, but are rather fed
| a lot of alarmist information.
|
| I imagine the parent poster's assumption is that it would be
| front page if this study said that natural immunity expires
| quickly, but we won't see this good news about long lasting
| immunity on the front page.
| dang wrote:
| All: I know it's an activating topic, but this thread has tons of
| comments breaking the site guidelines. That's not ok.
|
| If you're going to comment, make sure you know the rules and
| stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| That means making substantive points thoughtfully.
|
| If you want to put down or yell at people on the other side of
| this $hot-topic, or any topic, please do that somewhere else.
| We're trying for a little better than internet default here.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2
|
| vaccines also produce durable and persistent immune responses.
| Primary antibody titers wane, but the system itself remembers and
| can regenerate them when challenged.
|
| see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714 for contra "but
| muh boosters", which i suspect is what's helping me collect
| downvotes.
| orbifold wrote:
| Not really the anti-body count decays more quickly compared to
| that of a natural infection and does so dramatically especially
| for older people: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/art
| icle/PIIS0140-6.... This is the underlying reason that there is
| talk of boosters.
| rcpt wrote:
| Older people has to have some sample bias since those without
| strong immune systems died.
| Valgrim wrote:
| It is normal for antibodies to decline after an immune
| response, it doesn't mean the immunity is gone, the immune
| system remembers how to produce them when needed.
|
| The paper you link actually says that the memory B-cell
| populations appear to be maintained after the waning of the
| antibodies. B-cells are the cells that remembers and creates
| antibodies in response to an antigen (like the spike protein
| on the surface of the virus).
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Natural immunity may work better considering the vaccine
| requires booster shots every 12 months according to the Pfizer
| CEO.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/pfizer-ceo-says-third-covid-...
| Valgrim wrote:
| The requirement for booster shots may be for increasing
| immunity to variants, not the original virus. If you survived
| the original virus and got an immunity out of it you are just
| as vulnerable to variants as anyone who got the vaccine.
|
| Basically, subsequent shots are security updates.
| keneda7 wrote:
| Please stop spreading misinformation. IMO 15 weeks is not long
| enough to determine if its durable and persistent. There would
| be no talk of booster shots if what your saying is true.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| not so, see my other thread in this story here, and cool it
| on the personal attacks, thanks!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714
| keneda7 wrote:
| I updated my comment to make it less personal. Sorry about
| that
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| Bit of an overreaction. Stating that the testing period of 15
| weeks is, in your opinion, too short to determine long-term
| immunity would've sufficed as comment.
|
| No need to be uncivil to eachother when you don't agree.
| keneda7 wrote:
| Updated the comment.
| artursapek wrote:
| Why are you trolling this thread and shilling vaccines? Does
| the sight of people discussing the wonder of our natural immune
| system bother you?
| bitexploder wrote:
| No one is shilling vaccines. We use the "wonder of our
| natural immune system" effectively with the vaccine without
| being a public health risk to everyone around us by skipping
| it.
| iamadog129038 wrote:
| Interestingly, we're putting unnatural selection pressure
| on the viruses by leveraging vaccines that are leaky, this
| has in at least one example been shown to produce a
| deadlier pathogen for unvaccinated. So, maybe you had ought
| to be a little more skeptical about your risk assessments
| when the data isn't yet in and may never be until it is.
| And as for the philosophical conundrum, I'd posit that it's
| far safer to maintain the known function than it is the
| novel, keep the defaults. We've of course more or less
| crossed the Rubicon.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/leaky-
| vac...
| pixl97 wrote:
| This is a pretty bad take. No vaccine has 100% coverage.
| Most of the time we're talking about 85-90% protection
| rate, with some low possibility of mild infectious
| contagion.
|
| The particularly ignorant take on your part is ignoring
| 1918 to 1919 change in that flu. It 'naturally' became
| far more deadly with no vaccine needed.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Right. Abstractly viruses find a sweet spot between
| transmission rate and lethality to host. Too lethal and
| it won't spread very far. However, in practical terms
| there is a lot more room for something like COVID to be
| far more damaging and still spread just like it has been
| or more. All of the immunity we now have and the
| particular nature and quality of it will certainly impact
| what the virus does when mutating. If it really can
| breakthrough vaccinated populations it's going to change
| how it evolves. That is a lot of ifs, buts and maybes.
| The real world data just is t backing up a lot of these
| weak claims folks are making. In practical terms the
| vaccines work and do their job. There is a lot of
| interesting observations to make and we are in the middle
| of a great experiment of sorts, so we should be very data
| driven in my opinion.
| pixl97 wrote:
| In some ways I wonder how much randomness is involved.
| That the error bars involved in any particular virus is
| very large.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I could see a case to vaccinate people even if they have natural,
| durable, and long-lasting immunity to Covid-19 after infection if
| it makes their immunity even stronger.
| YPCrumble wrote:
| If twenty percent of the population has had covid, and fifty
| percent has been vaccinated, say we assume half of the twenty
| percent isn't an overlap. Wouldn't that put us much closer to the
| herd immunity number of seventy percent than we've been thinking?
| And that if infections continue at a high pace, shouldn't we
| reach that level very soon?
| raphlinus wrote:
| The idea of being at or near herd immunity has been pushed so
| many times since the start of this pandemic, and each time
| those hopes have been dashed.
|
| The threshold needed for herd immunity has been revised upward
| since the 70% figure was widely discussed. First, the R0 for
| the delta variant is almost certainly higher than for earlier
| variants. I am personally skeptical of claims in the 8 range,
| but they are widespread, especially by public health
| professionals, in contrast to, say, virologists, who tend to
| point to antigenic drift as a mechanism that could explain the
| rise in delta prevalence.
|
| Also, vaccine effectiveness is a factor in the herd immunity
| threshold, and that is also reduced a bit off earlier high
| estimates, partly because of variants and partly because of
| antibody waning.
|
| So my best guess is that herd immunity is now permanently out
| of reach. I'd love to be proved wrong on that, though.
| 015a wrote:
| Its important to keep studies like this in mind when talking with
| people who refuse to take the vaccine because they "already had
| COVID". In a very real sense, if natural antibodies are durable,
| persistent, and effective; the vaccine is an unnecessary medical
| procedure. Doctors would not cut off your legs for no reason;
| that would be unethical. The vaccine is a medical procedure like
| any other; if the benefit is questionable, it would be unethical
| for doctors to administer it.
|
| Yet, we have an increasing number of venues, workplaces, and
| events which are requiring proof of vaccination to participate.
| This is forcing both people who already have antibodies, and even
| people who can't make antibodies (e.g. immunocompromised, solid
| organ transplant, etc), to undergo a medical procedure for little
| to no benefit.
|
| Primum non nocere
| mxxc wrote:
| it is a scandal, especially considering the amount of non-
| immunised people at risk in the rest of the world. i fall in
| that category (recovered) and i would even pay to give my
| vaccines away.
| Hashemm wrote:
| Didn't realize anti-vaxxers would be on this site...
| [deleted]
| rantwasp wrote:
| they are everywhere. they have facebook phds in vaccines
| and public health along with a masters in selection bias.
| kiba wrote:
| It is not being used by people who should get said vaccine
| here in the states, and it is questionable if we even have
| the logistics to enable it.
|
| I supposed even if the logistics is questionable, we should
| try to distribute it to people who are actually going to use
| it.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Comparing it to an amputation is beyond ridiculous. If you have
| to make leaps of logic like this, you know your argument is
| extremely weak.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Ok, doctors would not administer steroids for long term use
| for minor pain, that would be unethical and highly dangerous
| (except they do, from first hand experience)
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Or prescribe antibiotics for potentially viral infections
| (they do...)
| bradleyy wrote:
| This is the tu quoque logical fallacy.
| 015a wrote:
| You're right; its a ridiculous comparison.
|
| The risks of amputation are relatively well-known and
| understood.
|
| The risks, especially long-term, of mass, imperfect
| vaccination, using an entirely brand new development
| technology; not well known. Not understood. Are there long-
| term, rare side-effects of the vaccine we don't know about?
| Will the imperfect nature of the vaccine and its rollout
| cause wider evolution of vaccine-resistant coronaviruses? We
| don't know.
|
| Its a ridiculous comparison because one of these things is
| dangerous; the other has unquantified risk.
|
| That's why "First, Do No Harm" is such an important
| foundation of medical ethics. We are dealing with systems
| more complex than you can even imagine; between the human
| body, multi-human interactions, and planet-scale resource
| allocation during a pandemic. There is a LOT we don't know.
|
| This doesn't mean you shouldn't get vaccinated. I have. Many
| people should. The benefits are well-known and understood;
| they're pretty strong. But it does mean, maybe there's a
| middleground we need to find which doesn't involve demonizing
| and ostracizing the people who choose not to. We should be
| better at understanding each-other, and understanding how
| dangerous unknown risks can be, especially when we're put
| into a position of making decisions out of fear.
| pfisherman wrote:
| I think other comments may have pointed this out already, but
| there are several problems with this line of reasoning.
|
| When deciding on whether or not to administer a procedure or
| treatment, one must consider the balance of potential harms and
| benefits, while accounting for uncertainty.
|
| In this particular case, the potential for harm from the
| vaccine is quite low (this is borne out by the data), and the
| benefits are mostly unknown. The potential harms of NOT taking
| the vaccine are mostly unknown (data is still coming in), and
| the potential benefit of that course of action is quite low. So
| it seems like the positive expected value / utility decision
| here is for them to get the vaccine.
|
| In your comment you use the analogy of a procedure with a much
| different risk / benefit profile. So that does not really hold
| up. A much better analogy would be something like routine
| screening for prostate cancer once you pass a certain age.
| Retric wrote:
| This line of thinking assumes you can reliably separate
| people that have had covid from those that haven't. In the
| real world requiring vaccines for everyone means vaccination
| of people that thought they had covid but didn't.
|
| Which I suspect may be the underlying reason studies are
| showing the vaccines are more effective than getting covid.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > In this particular case, the potential for harm from the
| vaccine is quite low (this is borne out by the data),
|
| Which is why a common anti-vax argument is sow doubt about
| the harmful effects.
|
| I noticed a few options:
|
| a) conspiratorial: "the government is lying about side harm"
|
| b) anecdotal: "I personally know at least 3 people who
| couldn't walk after the vaccine. Do you call me a liar?"
|
| c) hyper-skepticism: "how can we know if it long term side
| effect? Yes it's proven safe for X months, but what about in
| Y month? what about Y years?"
|
| I found it hard to defuse such positions with "just more
| data". They seem to be memes (crafted or just evolved?) that
| resist quite strongly to data.
| peteradio wrote:
| It seems to me very reasonable to worry about long-term
| outcomes when we are talking about vaccinating every man
| woman child. Maybe its got precedence but damn if its not
| worrying, and honest skepticism ought to be treated with
| respect not derided.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I'm not deriding the honest worry. Nobody can know with
| certainty anything about the future.
|
| I'm worrying about the paralyzing effects of a meme that
| says that since it's technically possible for an adverse
| affect to happen at an arbitrary point in the future, we
| cannot consider an option to curb the effects of a known
| problem we have right now.
|
| Often I'm accused of dismissing the possibility of
| adverse effects like if I knew with certainty that they
| can't happen. How could I? Nobody knows. That's not the
| point. The point is to make a guess and take balanced
| risks. We take risks all the time, about everything.
|
| What's so special about vaccines that causes such
| widespread reaction? Is it because people feel forced to
| take them? Is it something about the way they work that
| triggers such a reaction in people that often
| (anecdotally) don't care about things like effects of
| second hand smoke?
|
| (Genuine questions)
| peteradio wrote:
| I will try to answer your questions from my point of
| view.
|
| It appears "off" that there is no nuance to this
| vaccination strategy. It seems especially odd to advocate
| for vaccinating children who stand to benefit very little
| personally. I had planned to get vaccinated but have been
| pretty concerned by the totalitarian vibes I've been
| getting lately. So I guess I've decided to let my civics
| slide to match. I will get the vaccine for my own
| personal benefit (if I deem it so) and I expect that is
| basically what's motivated everyone else anyway. So far
| I've not seen a clear benefit to me. According to this
| page https://19andme.covid19.mathematica.org/ these are
| my stats:
|
| "probability of catching COVID-19 through community
| transmission in a week is 0.027%" "If you get sick from
| COVID-19, the risk of hospitalization is 1.3% , the risk
| of requiring an ICU is 0.67% , and the risk of not
| surviving is 0.053%"
|
| If I tell the calculator I'm vaccinated then most those
| stats go down by 2 which is good but my threshold for
| action is on an absolute scale and staying unvaccinated
| does not trip the sensor.
|
| I choose to live life in rural America in some part to
| avoid such calamities. As an unvaccinated person I am
| less of a risk to other people person than a vaccinated
| person in da big city.
|
| To me personally the main issue has little to do with
| vaccines and more to do with frankly unnecessary (in some
| cases) overreach. I'm not saying overreach has happened
| already, but recent overtures are quite alarming to me.
| ithkuil wrote:
| What would be your risk threshold (hypothetically
| speaking, if we could know it) that would make it for you
| a no-brainer to just take the vaccine assuming that you
| taking it would encourage other people who do fall in a
| higher risk bracket to also take it?
|
| Would 0.0001% risk be acceptable for you, hypothetically,
| as a civic duty?
| peteradio wrote:
| I'm not even assessing the risk of the vaccine in my
| judgement.
|
| I'm saying the apparent _risk of the disease_ to myself
| and from me to others is not above the necessary level to
| stir an action from me.
|
| I'm probably going to get the vaccine if I see some sense
| of nuance to the guidance. Such as reasonable advice
| properly and publicly discussing the relative
| risk/rewards for our various demographics. The current
| attitude that I'm confronted with in my day-to-day is
| "wow what a dumb fuck hes hurting himself and everyone
| around him", _for me_ the stats say otherwise.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I'm pulling a different angle into the equation: an
| altruistic angle. Are you a priori not interested in
| participating in an effort that would require an action
| from you (and possibly also a risk) unless you're
| directly beneficiary of such action?
| peteradio wrote:
| I'd assert that in such an experiment I would already be
| doing my part to reduce the impact of covid mainly due to
| where I live and minorly by my choices of how I live. The
| extra utility of that vaccine is effectively lost on me
| when that is figured in. When there is 0 utility then any
| altruistic action is nothing more than signaling. If I
| could be convinced there is serious utility for others by
| getting vaccinated then of course I would get it. Nobody
| seems willing to put real numbers to this, its simply "DO
| IT EVERYONE!"
|
| Lets say there are only 2 reasons to get the vaccine:
|
| 1) To protect yourself
|
| 2) To protect all those you care for.
|
| I'm not worried about 1 due to the apparently very low
| likelihood I will have some terrible personal covid
| outcome.
|
| I'm not worried about 2 due to the apparent very low
| likelihood of even catching covid.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Reasonable skepticism should not be derided. But I would
| say (a) the skepticism is borderline, and (b) poor
| decision making is what is being derided.
|
| So why is the skepticism borderline? Well we have over
| 100 years of data showing that vaccines I'm general are
| safe and effective. The safety and effectiveness of
| vaccines has drastically improved during that century -
| especially in the last 20 years. mRNA vaccines is a new
| platform, but all the preclinical and clinical data tee
| have shows they are safe and effective, and if we were
| going to see long term effects (which would be related to
| abnormal inflammatory / immune) response; it is highly
| likely we would have seen some indicator by now. Which
| specific long term effects are people even worried about?
|
| And this brings us to why it is a poor decision. SARS-
| COV2 rewires your innate immune response, and has been
| observed to cause abnormal inflammatory/ immune responses
| that cause to death and long term disability with
| alarming frequency. So it seems like extremely poor
| judgement to be worried about long term effects from the
| vaccine more than the virus. The first concern is largely
| unsupported by the data, while the second is
| unquestionably supported by the data.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Yes we have plenty of data about past vaccines:
|
| https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-side-effects-
| covid-19-va...
|
| "The history of vaccines shows that delayed effects
| following vaccination can occur. But when they do, these
| effects tend to happen within two months of vaccination:
| ...<some examples>"
|
| Whenever I show this kind of info to my family/friends
| that are against vaccines the response follow the three
| categories I posted earlier above.
|
| I categorically do not want to make fun of anybody. I
| really want to understand either:
|
| a) what's wrong about my understanding of the safety of
| this vaccination campaign (i.e. can really the world
| governments conspire so efficiently to hide the real
| data, or other arguments above)
|
| Or is it just a big identity politics problem, where we
| all think we engage in a rational discussion while each
| of us has already taken a stance that we cannot be moved
| out with arguments? (I'm putting myself into question
| too)
|
| b) how can I understand and reach my family members and
| friends and engage in a discussion that is not shut off
| quickly by one of the aforementioned unfalsifiable
| positions
| mercora wrote:
| how easy is it to test for these antibodies for a layman? could
| people actually easily get tested prior to considering a
| vaccination?
| landemva wrote:
| In my experience, the finger prick blood test cost $25 and 15
| minutes. This test is for blood antibodies. This is not the
| test for active infection, such as nasal PCR.
| 542458 wrote:
| The test is easy, but has a relatively high false positive
| rate. It also may use up lab resources that could be put to
| other uses.
|
| The other wrinkle (and possibly the most important one) is
| that we don't want to create a system where antivaxxers have
| an incentive to deliberately infect themselves and/or others.
| krona wrote:
| > _The test is easy, but has a relatively high false
| positive rate._
|
| _The FDA approved Roche serology test has a specificity
| greater than 99.8% and sensitivity of 100% (14 Days post-
| PCR confirmation)_
| https://www.roche.com/media/releases/med-cor-2020-05-03.htm
|
| I wouldn't say 0.02% is a particularly high FP rate.
| rubatuga wrote:
| I think GP is saying that people who are no longer sick
| or infected, such as a month later, show false lositives
| 542458 wrote:
| I was under the impressing that the Roche test was an
| outlier, and that most other tests do not match that.
| Most other tests have issues with cross reactivity with
| common cold antibodies.
| briefcomment wrote:
| It's available and getting cheaper pretty quickly. Hopefully
| others can chime in, seems like a promising path to take.
| lazyjones wrote:
| There are commercially available antibody tests that can
| distinguish between antibodies from natural infection and
| from the common vaccines.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti.
| ..
|
| > _The first vaccines distributed in the United States induce
| antibodies to S protein. Thus, presence of antibodies to N
| protein indicates previous natural infection regardless of
| vaccination status, while presence of antibodies to S protein
| indicates either previous natural infection or vaccination._
| echelon wrote:
| The vaccine is less dangerous than flying in an airplane. It
| can boost your immunity even further. (Every boost to immune
| recognition, recruitment, and proliferation decreases the odds
| of infection and spread. You need to understand how the system
| works, and that takes at least three months of study.)
|
| This anti-science meme is turning us into yelling cavemen.
|
| If you don't understand the science, please educate yourself
| before speaking out against it.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| As far I'm aware this is an American thing. I'm from Finland
| (no vaccine pass yet) but travelling in Germany/Austria right
| now. They have the concept of 3G (don't ask me to translate)
| but basically you can't eat, drink or stay anywhere without
| either a vaccine, recovery or negative test.
|
| There is a pop up antigen test facility about 100m from the
| restaurant where anyone can go get a quick negative result and
| go do their thing for a set period of time. I'm conflicted on
| this given the inaccuracy of the antigen tests.
|
| I'm currently sat in a restaurant typing this message, and have
| been served food and drink and yet to be asked to verify my EU
| certificate of vaccination. So your mileage may vary.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Most of the pushback I hear here (Italy) about the ability to
| just get tested as an alternative to vaccine certification is
| the cost. It's perceived as a tax on the freedom to not
| vaccinate.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| I just looked it up. Where I'm staying the tests are 57e,
| you do it yourself, and get a result within 20mins which is
| valid for 24h. That definitely is a high cost.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Probably as a tourist it is different? I live in Germany
| and you can get an antigen test for free per day. They
| are valid for 24 hours, so it costs 0EUR To get tested
| for any event.
| mmcnl wrote:
| The cost is not only in money, but also in time, and
| requiring more upfront planning. Legitimate concern imo.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| To a first approximation, the American thing is to not have
| any requirements for entry. There's a few employers and
| cities departing from that policy.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I had covid in November. Have had it again the past week and a
| half. It was a rough time the first time, but not as bad as
| when I had pneumonia.
|
| Now, A constant mild sore throat and a lot of bad headaches.
| Otherwise not much.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I know this thread is catnip for the antivax contingent that
| reliably appears, but this argument has several problems.
|
| First, our vaccines provide a stronger immune response than
| infection, as has been well documented by now[1]. Vaccination
| on top of prior infection boosts the response[2].
|
| Second, the harm from the vaccine is minimal, and comparing it
| with an amputation is ridiculous (in spite of the large number
| of superstitious people who believe otherwise).
|
| There are subtle arguments to be made for adjusting vaccination
| (one shot is almost certainly enough) when prior infection is
| documented, but from a public health perspective it's simple
| enough: pretty much everybody (over 12 until trials complete)
| should get vaccinated, and if they did, illness and death would
| decrease dramatically.
|
| [1]: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-
| genera...
|
| [2]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782139
| blub wrote:
| I haven't seen almost any comments on HN which can be
| qualified as anti-vaccine, so I find your assertion
| unjustified. But the real issue I have with such comments is
| that now apparently someone that does not want a _specific_
| medical treatment is being smeared as "antivax".
|
| Rejecting a medical intervention is a right people have. It
| doesn't matter it's because of 5G, fertility, medical
| conditions or them merely not being in the mood to take the
| vaccine.
| Loveaway wrote:
| No. Stop it. It's not simple enough. Stop this crazy
| obsession.
|
| Adverse reaction are real. Here's a woman who has had her
| legs amputated[1] a few days after receiving the second dose
| of the Pfizer vaccine. Stated cause: she contracted COVID.
| More cases like it, blood clots, heart inflammation, sudden
| death. You all know this is happening, don't you?
|
| Close your eyes and sweep it under the rug. Keep ignoring the
| uncomfortable and unfortunate. Keep dismissing it as minimal
| harm.
|
| You'd make the Nazis proud. When the Germans committed crimes
| against humanity the general population simply didn't know
| about it. They didn't notice millions of people were taken
| forcefully out of their homes. Rounded up and brought
| somewhere. Simply no idea what was happening. No of course
| they knew, they just suppressed it. To protect themselves and
| their fragile, fear-filled, state of mind.
|
| It sounds drastic, but this is the path you're on. Too
| committed to this narrative. Unable to evaluate the situation
| for what it is. The vaccine is not necessary and neither
| entirely safe. You have been listening to the fear porn for
| too long. The numbers don't add up, left and right. The
| reality is much more mundane.
|
| The number of COVID death in China to this day is 4,636 [2].
| People outside of risk groups have nothing to worry, will
| experience no to mild symptoms, before acquiring natural
| lasting immunity. Death rates around the world are barely
| moving, in many countries dead on average. The studies are
| worthless, when the larger, population-wide scale tells a
| different tale. People just aren't dying en masse - there's
| nothing to support this madness, or inject everybody with
| spike protein on annual basis, you truly are too daft to
| realize that? Do you think someone that does not have
| symptoms of illness, can be considered ill?
|
| Spin it however you want, ignore the inconsistencies, inject
| yourself with whatever calms your mind, but DO NOT force it
| onto others and for your own sake DO NOT continue to take
| booster shots.
|
| [1] https://www.ibtimes.sg/who-jummai-nache-minnesota-womans-
| bot... [2]
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/
| pcbro141 wrote:
| Serious question, why should we believe China CCP numbers?
| Natsu wrote:
| Adverse reactions are real, but they are orders of
| magnitude less likely than those caused by Covid itself and
| Covid is capable of causing basically all the same long
| tail harms the vaccines can.
|
| Which makes sense--many of them are made of some part of
| the virus, so how can they be more deadly than Covid itself
| if they're just a piece of it?
|
| It's weird to me that people aren't willing to trade a 2%
| risk for a 0.0002% risk when both have similar types of
| horrible outcomes.
| temac wrote:
| Maybe the comparison with amputation is a little over-the-top
| but let me illustrate with a few other real-world examples
| why this kind of concern is not _completely_ illegitimate.
|
| The health policy in some countries e.g. in France (and maybe
| large parts of Europe?) actually allow you to have an "health
| passport" just because you recovered from Covid recently
| enough.
|
| It would actually be illegal in France to privately require
| proof of vaccination if not exceptionally allowed by a narrow
| law (as a general principle, medical information are very
| protected here).
|
| _Some_ Covid vaccines have been forbidden for people under a
| specific age limit, although they were allowed for a while,
| but the risk has eventually been reassessed after a few
| suspects side effects (very very rare, but considered a risk
| important enough to change the policy, esp since the risk of
| covid itself decrease greatly the younger you are, and there
| are arguably safer alternatives in other models of vaccines).
|
| Of course it is still probably "on average" better to get
| vaccinated on top of recovering from Covid, and of course the
| comparison with amputation was probably over-the-top (at the
| very least it should have been stated as a risk of
| "amputation" with a very very low proba); but overly
| constraining people is debatable -- especially when tons of
| factor are hard to be synthetized to "everybody should just
| get vaccinated right now, unconditionally, -- and accept to
| be privately controlled by anybody -- or they are horrible
| antivax people and people will die because of them"; not
| everybody has the same amount of social contacts with the
| same categories of people and/or live in the same kind of
| city and accommodations, public health is not something that
| appears in empty social contexts just because of raw numbers
| and models, etc.
|
| Yes it probably would be better if "everybody" was
| vaccinated. Willingly. And if we had decades of feedback to
| convince people. And if they were vaccinated against other
| diseases too. Now welcome to the real world and think of how
| to navigate efficiently with imperfect knowledge, including
| how to avoid _entirely_ dismissing concerns.
|
| Primum non nocere certainly does not to be dropped and
| hopefully will not: the situation is shitty but will become
| clearer with time, and if we detect either more risks or more
| safety for various vaccines hopefully the policies will
| evolve accordingly, and individual opinions too. Note that
| they already are not completely binary and that it is still
| kind of hard to decide from which age we should allow /
| incite / require vaccination -- and the "optimal" solution
| probably depends on the coverage of the rest of the
| population too.
|
| And that's because of that very principle. There is _no exact
| obvious point_ where all-in starts to be required. It maybe
| would be useful to make regular-flu shots more or less
| mandatory (and now even the interest of flu-shots is debated
| by _serious_ scientists because it may be counter productive
| for the state of the immune system latter in life; or that
| may depend on people -- maybe new strains of covid would
| yield to similar debates in a few years?). They are typically
| not.
|
| That being said my current understanding make me wish more
| people go get vaccinated, but just do not pretend it is all
| black & white and that people should not have subtle/reserved
| opinions.
| peteradio wrote:
| [1] is not generally supportive of your very broad statement.
| You must qualify you statement with some indication of this
| stated limitation: "carrying "single letter" changes in a key
| portion of their spike protein"
| raphlinus wrote:
| It is one datapoint among many, but I found it interesting
| because it is based on careful biological experimentation
| and directly compares immune response from vaccination and
| prior infection. Another relevant quote: "Importantly, the
| vaccine-elicited antibodies targeted a broader range of
| places on the RBD than those elicited by natural
| infection." This is not an intuitively obvious result.
|
| But, since it was asked, here are more studies that support
| the broader point:
|
| * https://www.contagionlive.com/view/immune-response-from-
| mrna... describes a study directly addressing the question,
| and with impressive results.
|
| * https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/covid-19-vaccine-
| generates-i... didn't directly compare against prior
| infection, but this is discussed briefly and there is
| strong support in favor of protection from vaccines.
|
| * https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/marty-makary/92434
| is a discussion with a virologist (not peer reviewed
| science).
| peteradio wrote:
| It seems odd to present these tangential measurements
| when what I think most people are interested in is
| personal outcomes. How can one relate relative increases
| in seropositivity to patient outcomes? Why don't we see
| studies which conclusively nail this down? I'm well aware
| of this study https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs
| /mm7032e1-H.pdf, I'm unmoved by it, see this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106987 . Are you
| aware of more substantial studies to date? Thank you for
| the links and the discussion. I personally have yet to
| get the vaccine but do consider myself persuadable.
| _Microft wrote:
| I couldn't put the quote into context properly, so in case
| you are also wondering, here is the full quote:
|
| _" The new evidence shows that protective antibodies
| generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a
| broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying "single
| letter" changes in a key portion of their spike protein
| compared to antibodies acquired from an infection."_,
| excerpt from the article
| [deleted]
| criticaltinker wrote:
| > vaccines provide a stronger immune response than infection
|
| This is a blatant oversimplification & misrepresentation of
| the article you referenced, and the paper which it cites [1].
| The paper makes no claims that vaccine induced immune
| responses are more or less superior than the immune response
| induced by natural infection.
|
| Quote from [1]:
|
| - "Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were
| more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an
| infection, which more often targeted other portions of the
| spike protein."
|
| Counterintuitively, this property of the current mRNA
| vaccines - the induction of an immune response highly
| targeted toward the spike protein RBD - when combined with
| compulsory mass vaccination, could result in widespread
| proliferation of vaccine resistant variants [2][3][4][5].
| This is a serious concern that is on the radar of many top
| experts in the field.
|
| The second and third order consequences of mass vaccination
| using an imperfect vaccine are anything but simple, and very
| much pose a public health risk.
|
| When you consider the evidence supporting the fact that
| natural immunity is at least equally effective as vaccination
| (a few more supporting references here [6][7]), it becomes
| very difficult to defend the idea you're advocating:
|
| > it's simple enough: pretty much everybody (over 12 until
| trials complete) should get vaccinated
|
| [1] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more
| broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from
| SARS-CoV-2 infection
| https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/600/eabi9915
|
| [2] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical
| interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
|
| [3] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant
| of concern https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/
| 06/30/scie...
|
| [4] mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and
| circulating variants
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6
|
| [5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of
| Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiolo
| gy/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
|
| [6] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected
| individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.0
| 1.21258176v...
|
| [7] Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild
| SARS-CoV-2 Infection
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/
| dsyrk wrote:
| Why are you intentionally misleading people with dis-
| information.
| asddubs wrote:
| interesting, over here in germany if you (provably) had covid
| you don't have to get vaccinated to enter places requiring that
| or a test
| l33tman wrote:
| I think the EU timeout for the proved infection is 6 months
| unfortunately. So someone in the EU decided that a COVID
| infection's protection only lasts 6 months.
| querez wrote:
| In the absence of long-term studies, isn't it prudent to
| assume it has a shell-life? And if so, who's to say 6 month
| isn't a sensible heuristic?
| rvp-x wrote:
| I am under the impression that a lot of places consider
| recovered cases as equivalent to fully vaccinated.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| > In a very real sense, if natural antibodies are durable,
| persistent, and effective; the vaccine is an unnecessary
| medical procedure. Doctors would not cut off your legs for no
| reason; that would be unethical.
|
| Taking a vaccine is not equivalent to cutting off someone's
| legs. It's an accepted practice in every modern society to
| prevent unnecessary pain, suffering, and death.
|
| > Yet, we have an increasing number of venues, workplaces, and
| events which are requiring proof of vaccination to participate.
| This is forcing both people who already have antibodies, and
| even people who can't make antibodies (e.g. immunocompromised,
| solid organ transplant, etc), to undergo a medical procedure
| for little to no benefit.
|
| Getting a COVID vaccine is the only way you can help someone
| who is immunocompromised since they can't take it. They have to
| rely on the rest of us to provide relative herd immunity. Even
| if you _think_ you have antibodies, getting a vaccine is the
| best way to make sure, and allows health officials to make
| informed decisions based on vaccination rates.
|
| Why would you think there's no benefit to preventing painful
| sickness and death for your neighbors? I have zero tolerance or
| patience left for fair weather patriots who refuse wear a mask
| or get a shot because maintaining their political identity is
| more important than doing their best to make sure a fellow
| citizen doesn't die alone in a COVID ward. It's a staggering
| display of cowardice and selfishness.
|
| Grow the fuck up. Wear a mask. Get the shot. It's the very
| least you can do.
| krona wrote:
| > _and allows health officials to make informed decisions
| based on vaccination rates._
|
| Barely. Forecasting is being done on antibody levels at least
| in countries that are running good real-time surveillance
| studies. Hence why Israel/Germany/UK are deploying third
| shots and many other countries will do the same.
| Woodrow503 wrote:
| Question: I've got the vaccine. I get a breakthrough case.
|
| Is this a "best case" scenario for durable immunity?
| jron wrote:
| This seems like the most important unasked question. Common
| sense would suggest the best case would be vaccination followed
| by repeated exposure to the virus yet hardly anyone is talking
| about it.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i wonder if that's what normally happens in nature across
| many viruses. like a primed immune system exposed to a new
| variant runs a minor "software update" now and then.
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